An initiative, Design Of The Year Festival has been launched to stimulate innovation and drive the rapid progression of value for businesses in Nigeria.
The festival, which has BusinessDay as Media Partner, comprises a conference, workshop and exhibition that culminates in an Awards presentation that celebrates products, services, systems and individuals that are thinking new ways of generating new business value and leveraging design to improve quality of life for people.
Solomon Ikhioda, Director at Design Of The Year says, “our value proposition to participating companies and individuals is how they can attain leadership through a culture of non-stop innovation, letting them know how Design is the secret source of the much talked about innovation, which many businesses seek but find to be frustratingly elusive. They will experience how Design can help discover new areas of untapped value, where customers are willing to pay a premium for products and services they love.
This is a unique initiative that has been designed to aggregate a singular platform for catalyzing and rewarding design in its widest ramifications- beyond its popular perception as being all about artifacts and colors.”
The conference keynote and workshop will be delivered by Marty Neumeier, Silicon Valley Transformation expert who will be bringing the truth, with case studies, that design and leadership are synonymous. “You can’t be a leader by following the leader so, if you wanna innovate, you gotta design,” is his favorite quote.
The prolific author states that his over 30 years of consulting for Silicon Valley companies such as Apple, Google, HP among others have taught him that there can be no business transformation without turning imagination into originality, and originality into action that creates differentiation in product offerings that people need.”
Marty’s principles have also been used in the creation of other world-class brands for companies like Adobe, GE, UPS and Microsoft.
Presently the director of Transformation for Liquid Agency, Neumeier is a thought leader and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of design, brand, and innovation. His passion is guiding CEOs through the sometimes complex process of strategic innovation and how to build charismatic brands and organizational culture.
His book The Brand Gap is a global bestseller. The online version has been downloaded more than 22 million times. His second book, ‘ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-performance Brands’, was named one of the “top hundred business books of all time.” He has gone on to write another business bestseller, The Designful Company, and three more books on business creativity and innovation. His forthcoming book, Scramble, is a “business thriller” that teaches leaders and their teams the secrets of agile strategy.
A constellation of notable Nigerians in various fields of Design practice will also speak and facilitate aspects of the festival.
The critical audience at the festival which will hold from 4th to 6th October in Lagos are the business community- manufacturers, players in technology, organizations and professions engaged in the legacy definition of Design (eg Advertising, Architecture, Fashion, Film & the creative industries), Builders, Academia ( especially
Universities Administrators and Students), job creation agencies, the Lifestyle market, Governments.
